A lottery is a form of gambling wherein wagering players bet on their being selected by chance to win a valuable prize. In a typical lottery, players buy tickets with a series of characters thereon from authorized sellers at fixed prices. At a subsequent drawing, winning characters are selected on an unpredictable basis for comparison with the players' characters. Players with sufficient matching of characters win valuable prizes.
For hundreds of years, government-run lotteries have been used both to raise public revenues and to supplement or substitute for taxation. For example, a 1680 English lottery raised funds to improve London's water supply equipment, and the Irish Sweepstakes has been a significant source of revenue for many years. In the United States, lotteries disappeared from existence from 1894, when the federal government and many state governments enacted legislation restricting or prohibiting them, until 1963, when New Hampshire authorized a sweepstakes lottery and designated that a portion of the general lottery revenue would be spent on education. Lotteries, found to be relatively painless means of raising revenues while avoiding adding or increasing taxes, have spread quickly to more than half of the United States. Of course, every sponsoring state wishes to get the greatest economic benefit from its lottery.
Unfortunately, certain factors have hampered and even lessened the success of lottery games. For example, lotteries must contend with the widespread view of gambling as a vice. Notwithstanding the lottery's stated public purpose, many have difficulty seeing beyond its undeniably gambling-based roots to appreciate the charitable results of lottery participation. Such persons are joined by many who see lottery participation as wasteful. One may note, however, that these very people are often those who would be most prone to give to charity. With this in mind, it would be advantageous to attract these largely untapped segments of the public to buy lottery tickets. One way of doing this would be by making the charitable aspect of the state lottery more visible, more tangible. One might suspect that, concomitantly with attracting an otherwise non-participating group, a clearer cause-and-effect relationship of lottery participation with public benefit may encourage and sustain those who already participate.
Aside from the public psyche, many argue that the original purposes of many lotteries as fund raisers for local communities have been or have become unsatisfied. Indeed, the faint connection between one's purchasing of a lottery ticket and the benefit exacted upon the communities gives at least the appearance of poorly directed funds. It would be advantageous to make clear and unimpeded the path of at least some of the funds destined for public purposes. Doing so would prove and ensure that allotted monies reach their proper destination (i.e. a school).
With the above in mind, a novel lottery game is needed which would emphasize and capitalize on a lottery's charitable purposes while more directly benefitting the entities for whom, at least in part, the lottery is conducted.